Whispers Of Immortality
by Katt9966
Summary: Sometimes life's unfair. Character death.
1. Default Chapter

Title: - Whispers of Immortality

Author: - Katt

E-Mail: - - FRT

Feedback: - Like it or loathe it, let me know

Archive: - Archived at the Shield Fanfiction Archive

Disclaimers: - I don't own any of the characters of The Shield, they all belong to Shawn Ryan and FX. The song "Afternoons and Coffeespoons" is performed by Crash Test Dummies and written by Brad Roberts. The title "Whispers of Immortality" is from the poem of the same name by T. S. Eliot.

Author's Notes: - Whipper very kindly betaed this fic for me, doing some marvelous tinkering, and trying to reign in my comma compulsion LOL. Thank you Whipper.

Whispers of Immortality - First Verse

"What is it that makes me just a little bit queasy?

There's a breeze that makes my breathing not so easy

I've had my lungs checked out with x-rays

I've smelled the hospital hallways

Someday I'll have a disappearing hairline

Someday I'll wear pyjamas in the daytime."

When he was a kid he used to spend hours up in his room, lying on his bed while studying his atlas. All the countries of the world joined together, different colours like a quilt. The maps at the beginning of the atlas telling him which country had the most coal deposits, or grain production. Maps where the red triangles represented volcanoes. The map of the world that was all in different shades of purple showing him each country's life expectancy for it's citizens. You sure didn't want to live in one of those countries that were coloured a light mauve where it was only 35-45. There were city maps and in his head he'd walked down the streets of Berlin, Paris and Tokyo. He would marvel at the fact that if he flew from London to Toronto the time zones meant he'd get to Canada an hour before he'd left England! He'd wanted to do that one day because he'd thought that he'd be able to cheat time and get an extra hour. He was going to go to all those places with names that captured his imagination; Reykjavik, Ouagadouguo, Arkhangel'sk and dozens more. He was going to visit every continent, see it all. Then he got older. More time needed to be spent maintaining those straight "A's" so badly needed in order to escape small town Nebraska, go to college, and do something great with his life.

Now he'd never get the chance to see those places. He could've traveled, could've lived... instead he'd had his head stuck in books, putting everything off. There would always be time tomorrow, next month, next year…

Sitting in his car outside The Barn Dutch just couldn't make himself take his hands off the steering wheel and get out of the car. Glancing down at the car clock, ignoring the few puzzled glances he got from people passing him by, he saw that he was already ten minutes late. Just another five minutes, he thought to himself. And suddenly he saw his life stretching out in front of him, a finite number of "five minutes" slowly counting down, only not slowly enough.

He just wanted a little more time before he went in there. He had decided to tell Claudette first. She was his partner, she deserved to know first, deserved to hear it from him. For some strange reason he felt like he was letting her down, deserting her. Not for the first time that morning he wondered if he should've worn a suit instead of the casual Chinos and sweater he'd opted for. Somehow though he hadn't felt comfortable putting one on. He'd left them hanging in a neat row in his closet. Like Kim and her closet full of Kyle's suits, hanging there waiting for a dead man to return and pull one out. That's why he hadn't put one on today. Just looking at them had reminded him of a dead Kyle, and he hadn't wanted to wear something that made him think of death.

Just a stupid fucking cough.

A persistent, annoying fucking cough, sure, but just a cough nonetheless. It had hung around for over a month, despite the increasing amounts of cough syrup he drank. Sometimes the cough was accompanied by a sharp pain in his chest, like talons being dragged over his chest cavity from the inside. He tried to keep the cough in sometimes. Clamping his mouth shut, refusing to give in to the tickle at the base of his throat, swallowing saliva hoping it would ease the dry, scratchy feeling. Feeling it welling up inside him, determined to escape, until he had to admit defeat and give in, spluttering and panting in its wake.

He had to tighten his belt an extra notch or two. But the thought of food making him queasy, that was just because he'd been working really hard lately. Getting a little breathless climbing his stairs just meant he had to seriously think about joining a gym. When he'd coughed, hand in front of his mouth, to spare the rest of the world his germs, and had pulled his hand away to find it speckled with little red drops of blood... well, then he'd finally begun to wonder if maybe it wasn't just a virus. The theory he'd formed that he'd just ruptured a little blood vessel in his throat through coughing was blown away when he'd begun surreptitiously coughing up blood into a handkerchief, like the pale, wane, consumptive heroine in a Victorian melodrama.

The symptoms "googled" on the Internet hadn't reassured him, but had convinced him to make an appointment with his doctor. The way his doctor's mouth had tightened ever so slightly as he'd described his symptoms, and the way he'd rushed him straight off to the hospital for an x-ray "just to be on the safe side", had done nothing to reassure Dutch either.

As he'd stood, his bare chest pressed up against the cold metal, having his insides photographed by a woman who smiled too much and hid away in her lead-lined anti-room, Dutch didn't think he'd ever felt quite so exposed in his life. There was something really personal about someone getting to look at your internal organs, he'd decided.

Shadows his doctor had called them, shadows on his lungs. That tightening of his mouth had been back, even as he'd told Dutch: "I don't want you to worry too much, these things are often benign." Dutch wondered if they taught platitudes, the monotone voice and reassuring smile that never reached the eyes in medical school along with bio-chemistry and the principles of anatomy. Was this bedside manner? Because if it was, he figured his doctor had probably been at the bottom of the class for that particular lesson, or maybe he'd missed it altogether.

Dutch had sat in the doctor's office as he'd phoned the hospital arranging various tests to be carried out -- "…as soon as possible!" -- and had thought about the euphemism "shadows". For some reason it had made him think about "Babylon 5", a sci-fi show he'd gotten hooked on for a while a few years previously. The bad guys in the show were referred to as "The Shadows". He couldn't remember if you ever got to see them, but they did fly around the universe in creepy space ships that were black and looked like giant spiders. That's what he saw when he thought about the shadows on his lungs the x-ray had found; giant black spiders with long legs like tendrils, shaped like those evil space ships, wrapping themselves around his lungs...

He'd needed time off from work to have the tests done, but he hadn't wanted to tell anyone, so he'd called in sick. Stomach flu, really contagious just to make sure no one visited. Since it was the first time he'd ever called in sick there had been no argument when he'd told Aceveda's secretary that he'd be off for a week. The concerned phone calls from Claudette had been fielded with ease, although he'd felt a pang of guilt for lying to her. He'd absolved himself from that by arguing that if she knew the truth she'd only worry, it was kinder of him not to tell her until he knew something for certain.

So the first time in his life he'd ever played hooky and he got to spend it hanging about at the hospital. He got to spend it listening to the same platitudes as he'd heard from his own doctor. Only this time from doctors of whom some didn't look old enough to have left high school. He wondered if maybe there was a "Platitudes Textbook For Physicians".

He also got to spit into a cup a couple of times and give more samples of blood than he was sure was good for him. Then came the broncoscopy. A thin tube had been threaded down his throat while he was feeling a little floaty from a sedative. He remembered that the medicine they'd made him drink had left his mouth as dry as a desert. They were taking tissue samples and having a look around, they said, and he'd wondered if it looked like the pictures he'd seen on the Health Channel of cameras sliding down people's insides. Down tubes that were all pink and moist and slimy looking. What would they see at the end he'd wondered? Those black spiders, or maybe oozing tumors. He'd squeezed his eyes shut and had tried to go with the floaty feeling and imagine himself somewhere else, but the quiet voices of the doctor and nurses kept edging into his tropical beach fantasy. The CT scan had been another test carried out in a room all on his own, just like the x-ray. The only communication with the outside world the disembodied voice of the technician telling him when to hold his breath before the giant machine he was incased in began to hum into life around him. He began to realise that he'd be on his own for a lot of what was going to happen from now on. He'd never minded his own company before, but right then he'd found himself wishing he had someone to hold his hand.

Those were the exciting highlights of his week though. Most of it had actually been spent sitting in uncomfortable plastic chairs in hospital hallways, wondering if every hospital in the world had the same battered copy of the National Geographic magazine for November 1998 and dog-eared copies of "Peter Rabbit". The thought that there might be a readership for "Peter Rabbit" who would find themselves waiting in the same hallways as him, for the same tests, had pushed him into real depression.

If he breathed too deeply he could still smell that hospital smell he hated so much; disinfectant, urine and nameless chemicals with a little underlying aroma of fear and uncertainty. The smell seemed to seep into your pores after a while, it was on your clothes, in your hair, and no matter how long you stayed in the shower the slight whiff of it lingered around you. He supposed he'd better start getting used to it.

He'd seen his doctor again yesterday, and the man had been so tense that Dutch had thought he might snap. Then the platitudes - "I'm very sorry to have to tell you…It really is most unusual in a man as young as you…We'll do all we can…Modern treatments can give you some extra time, months even…"

It wasn't fucking fair. Lung cancer, and not just any lung cancer, but small cell lung cancer that had already metastasized throughout his body. A black poison that had stealthily spread itself around his insides. More tests would be needed to determine more accurately where it had spread, but the lymph nodes, liver, bones, brain had all been mentioned, and Dutch had felt his guts turn to ice as he'd realised he was dead. He was being eaten alive from the inside inch by inch, and he was dead, he just hadn't lain down and stopped breathing yet. Lung cancer, what was with that? It wasn't as if he'd even smoked, unless you counted the two cigarettes he'd smoked when he was ten, sharing them with Carl Pearson who'd stolen them from his mom's purse. They'd made him dizzy and sick, and he'd promised himself then, and there, never to smoke again, and he'd kept that promise. Looks like he shouldn't have bothered, should've kicked back, lit up and puffed away for all he was worth.

It wasn't fucking fair. He was angry, and frightened, and now he had to go into The Barn and tell Claudette that she'd have to find herself another partner because he was never coming back to work again. Because everything he'd worked so hard to achieve meant nothing anymore, because he was going to die. He was going to die and he'd never done anything with his life. He'd never seen Arkhangel'sk, or set foot on all seven continents, or strolled along the Thames or the Seine. He'd never done any of the things he'd spent cold, rainy Winter days, and hot, lazy Summer days, dreaming about when he was a kid.

It wasn't fucking fair.


	2. Whispers Of Immortality 2

Title: - Whispers of Immortality

Author: - Katt

E-Mail: - - T

Feedback: - Like it or loathe it let me know

Archive: - Archived at the Shield Fanfiction Archive

Disclaimers: - I don't any of the characters of The Shield, they all belong to Shawn Ryan and FX. The song "Afternoons and Coffeespoons" is performed by Crash Test Dummies and written by Brad Roberts. The title "Whispers of Immortality" is from the poem of the same name by T. S. Eliot.

Whispers of Immortality - Second Verse

_"Times when the day is like a play by Sartre _

When it seems a book burning's in perfect order -

I gave the doctor my description

I've tried to stick to my prescriptions

Someday I'll have a disappearing hairline

Someday I'll wear pyjamas in the daytime

Afternoons will be measured out

Measured out, measured with

Coffeespoons and T. S. Eliot."

Pressing his face against the tiles on the bathroom wall, Dutch felt the chill from them on his cheek. Sitting on the floor, his back leaning against the wall, he stared into the distance. His brain felt tired and sluggish, his body drained. He found himself staring at the shower stall and remembered the moment when it had all become real. The moment when he had finally accepted the enormity --_ the finality_ -- of it all.

He'd been standing under the hot water, his eyes closed and his face turned upwards towards the warm flow. He'd wanted the warmth and the soap to carry away the smell of the hospital and the tiredness and creeping despair he'd felt. He'd suddenly realized that he was standing in a couple of inches of water because something was blocking the drain, preventing the water from flowing away. He'd run a hand over his face and then looked down. Looked down to see hair. The drain was blocked by hair, his hair. With a shaking hand he'd reached up and passing it over his head, closing his fist, he'd found a clump of hair trapped in his hand. He'd dropped it like it was burning his flesh and it had fallen to join the other soft, brown strands that moved gently back and forth in the pooling water. Stumbling from the shower he'd stood dripping wet and increasingly cold, staring at the shower stall as if it was somehow responsible. The he had ended up sitting naked on the floor, not too far from where he was now, crying because he was dying and he so wanted to carry on living.

The reason for his hair loss was of course the poison the hospital kept pumping into his body, into his brain. One poison supposedly fighting another. Chemotherapy, drugs, etoposide and cisplatin being pumped into his veins fighting the cancer cells in his lungs, his lymph nodes and liver. Well, not really fighting them, more a case of temporary containment, trying to buy him some more time. "Palliative treatment" they called it. Privately he visualised it as two armies drawn up inside him. The black spiders surrounded and besieged, by the forces of good. Well, the guys not so much in the white hats as grey hats actually. It was only a holding action though, eventually the spiders would multiply too rapidly and break through, and then he'd be finished. _"Six months," _he'd been told and "_maybe, if you're lucky"_, they could stretch that to eight months. He'd see one more spring, one more summer, might be lucky enough to make it to his birthday... but he'd never see another Christmas. If he'd known that it was going to be his last one he wouldn't have worked the previous year. Maybe he'd have gone away, gone skiing or something, he hadn't done that since he was a kid back in Nebraska, he'd never managed to find the time.

He hadn't been sure though if it had been the chemo drugs or the radiation therapy, which had caused his hair to fall out. He suspected the latter. It had been a couple of days after his first round of prophylactic cranial irradiation. Huh, his vocabulary was growing all the time it seemed. His CT scans had shown that the cancer hadn't spread to his brain and the radiation therapy was to prevent that from happening. Ten to fifteen minutes spent lying with his head encased in a linear accelerator once a month was supposed to be enough to prevent cancer cells from growing inside his head. He certainly hoped so.

Having the treatment in the first place had been a hard decision. Not because he hadn't wanted to buy himself extra time. He didn't want to die and if the Grim Reaper was coming for him Dutch had decided that he'd make the bastard wait for as long as possible only to finally have to drag him off kicking and screaming. He had to agree with Dylan Thomas on this one - _"Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light."_ The difficulty had come when the possible side effects had been explained to him. The fatigue, even the hair loss, had been expected, but the possibility that it would effect his intellect, his memory, his motor function, _that _had given him pause for thought. Still, the side effects from a brain tumor were no more attractive and in the end Dutch had decided that the damned cancer had already won too much ground. It had spread and infected too much of his body and he wasn't letting it take any more from him without a fight. Still every lapse of memory caused by tiredness, every tremor in his hands made him wonder if, now that he was three months into his treatment, maybe some signs of degradation were beginning to show.

Once again turning his face into the cold tiles of the wall, Dutch rubbed his damp forehead against their comforting coolness and forced his thoughts away from the frightening prospect that he might be losing his mind. That little bits of himself were floating away down the drain, just like his hair.

Back to his hair again, he thought with a rye smile. It wasn't so much that he was vain. He'd never exactly been the sex-symbol type, but he'd still spent the past few years watching his slightly receding hairline with dismay and then it had all gone in a matter of days. In the end he'd taken it away himself, shaving off what remained, wanting to take back some control over his own body. Because it was still his body, even though it no longer seemed so sometimes. Even though it seemed as if it belonged to the illness, to the doctors, to just about everyone _but_ him. By Christ if he were going to be bald then he'd use a razor, not wait to be left with some pathetic clumps here and there. So he'd gone down the Vic Mackey road of hair-care. Not that he could pull it off as convincingly as Vic could. So now he wore baseball caps. Hey, at least they kept the sun off; Mackey had to be spending a fortune on sunscreen.

Just because he'd finished what the treatments had started didn't mean he was comfortable with his new look though. He definitely tried to avoid looking in the mirror now. If he caught his reflection he saw a stranger looking back at him, an alien. Sometimes he couldn't help but to think of himself as a monster, guaranteed to frighten the kiddies. He was pretty sure that was why parents would occasionally drag their kids away by their arms telling them "not to stare at the poor man", their faces burning with embarrassment as they tried to look anywhere but at him. It was one of the reasons he felt uncomfortable going out now. He was different and that always seemed to fascinate people. He'd feel their stares, feel their pity, feel their fear as they realised what the bald head and gaunt, pale appearance signified: disease and death. Some even moved away from him, as if he were contagious, as if by touching him they might find themselves cursed too. Of course, he thought wryly, he might just be imagining it, so self-conscious that he felt himself to be the centre of attention when nobody even noticed him. Or maybe irradiating his brain was skewing his perceptions.

Or maybe he was projecting his own prejudices back upon himself in a kind of karmic punishment. The oncology department at the hospital was somewhere he hated. Not only because his visits there marked out the milestones in his life now, one chemo session equaled a sixth of his life gone, today's third session equaling the distinct possibility that one half of his life had passed. And those were days he didn't want to spend in waiting rooms or treatment rooms. Days he didn't want to come face to face with other cancer sufferers. He didn't want to look into their faces and see a reflection of his own. He didn't want to be associated with them, be one of them. He didn't want to spend his time with the sick; he wanted to be outside with the living, the healthy. Sometimes he felt panic welling up in his chest as he lay unmoving in the CT scanner or the linear accelerator because encased in the machines he could picture himself lying in his coffin. Catching his reflection he could see the skull behind his sunken cheeks and pale skin. That was why people shied away from him now. It wasn't so much that he looked like he was dying; it was that he looked like death - that he was death.

Christ, you sound like a miserable bastard, Dutch thought to himself. He wasn't all doom and gloom. His sudden and unwanted look at his own mortality had affected him in other ways. He understood what people who had had brushes with death meant when they talked about appreciating life so much more because that was exactly how he felt. It was the smallest things that would suddenly grab his attention and entrance him as if he'd never experienced them before. Hearing a phrase of music that seemed to vibrate through his soul, seeing a combination of colours in a bird's wing that should clash, but which nature had somehow managed to blend together to perfection, a smell that transported him back twenty five years to a summer's day spent on his uncle's farm playing in the barn with his cousins, a day, the pure, innocent joy of which, he'd forgotten all about.

The small smile that had formed on his face at once again remembering that golden day faded as he thought about children. The hospital had offered to freeze his sperm, since the treatments would leave him sterile, but since no one would want it he hadn't taken them up on their offer. There would never be any little Dutch Wagenbach's running around, his genetic lineage ended with him. He'd once thought, for about an hour, that he was going to be a father, but Lucy had soon set him right on that misconception. He'd lost his chance at immortality; everything he was would die along with him.

What was that exactly? What was he? A good man? He'd tried to be. A good friend? He hoped so. A dedicated detective? Yes, that he was sure of, he'd always given everything of himself to his job. Would that be how he was remembered? Would he even be remembered, he wondered bitterly. Even now Claudette had a new partner, Greg someone-or-other. Thankfully she didn't talk about him with Dutch. He was glad about that because he always had a sneaking feeling deep down in his soul that Greg, what-ever-he-was-called, was stealing his life. Greg was doing his job, Greg was interacting with his colleagues, Greg was living his life. Needless to say Dutch didn't like Greg very much.

Suddenly he felt a wave of heat consume his body from the inside and a flood of nausea stopped him from envying Greg anymore. The sickness brought on by that day's chemotherapy overwhelmed him once again and he dry heaved into the toilet, briefly wondering if a couple of extra months were worth all of this.

He didn't hear the door opening behind him, but he felt the soft cool hand that brushed his forehead, the other hand that smoothed little circles across his back.

"It's okay son, you're not on your own."

Claudette's presence centering him in his distress. It was worth it. Every hour spent heaving into the toilet, every hour spent feeling exhausted, every hour spent at the hospital, was all worth it. It kept him here, it meant he could find miracles in the world, it meant he could hold a friend's hand and feel he was loved, that he'd be missed when he was gone. It meant he was somebody. Somebody more than a set of symptoms, a diagnosis, a set of treatment and drug regimes. He was a person, a life, and he was going to hold on to that with all his strength.


	3. Whispers Of Immortality 3

Title: - Whispers of Immortality

Author: - Katt

E-Mail: - - T

Feedback: - Like it or loathe it let me know

Archive: - Archived at the Shield Fanfiction Archive

Disclaimers: - I don't any of the characters of The Shield, they all belong to Shawn Ryan and FX. The song "Afternoons and Coffeespoons" is performed by Crash Test Dummies and written by Brad Roberts. The title "Whispers of Immortality" is from the poem of the same name by T. S. Eliot.

Whispers of Immortality - Third Verse

"Maybe if I could do a play-by-play back

I could change the test results that I will get back

I've watched the summer evenings pass by

I've heard the rattle in my bronchi…

Someday I'll have a disappearing hairline

Someday I'll wear pyjamas in the daytime

Afternoons will be measured out

Measured out, measured with

Coffeespoons and T. S. Eliot."

Well, he'd made eight months, had in fact passed that mile stone just the day before. Yeah, eight months since his diagnosis and he was still here. Admittedly his remaining time was slipping away. Months had become weeks and were now down to days. It was his birthday next week, but Dutch knew he'd never see it. Still, he'd had the spring and the summer and he was grateful for that. The chemotherapy and radiation therapy had been doing their jobs and held back the rotting canker inside him for a little while. Now though the black spiders, the shadows, had won.

He was sitting up for an hour. The time spent out of his bed was getting less and less, as he grew weaker and the morphine doses grew stronger. The last dose he'd had was beginning to wear off. He could feel those burning talons back, ripping their way through his insides, making his breathing harder, shallower, making his mind a little slower as it was consumed by the razor sharp beast within him.

Trying to ignore the gnawing pain Dutch looked out through the window at the pleasant garden outside. He'd managed to stay at home until two weeks ago when he'd finally been forced to admit defeat and agree to come to the hospice. It was a nice place he had to admit, quiet and peaceful. He liked to think of it as a kind of halfway house. A stepping stone on his journey from his life, to…to whatever lay beyond.

Looking down at the book in his lap Dutch toyed with the idea of picking it up to read but decided that he felt too tired. That was perhaps _the _one good thing about all of this, he had finally been given a chance to catch up on his reading. Not the weighty academic tomes he'd usually felt obliged to read so that he could be as good a detective it was in his power to be. No, now he read all those books he'd always meant to read, all the books he'd always wanted to read. Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" -- well, he might not be able to work anymore, but he was still a detective in his heart -- and poetry; Sylvia Plath, Dylan Thomas, T. S. Eliot... He hadn't read poetry since high school, and then only under protest. However, now he found it soothing and he wished he'd made more time to read it before he'd became ill.

He wondered what time it was. Claudette was due to visit this evening after work. He always looked forward to her visits; she'd been so good to him all through his illness. She'd always been there when he'd needed her, she held his hand when he was scared and in pain, held him when he was sick and had simply just been there when he'd cried. She'd never judged him or offered platitudes, just given silent support. As always, the perfect partner, the perfect friend.

He'd had lots of other visits though, not just from Claudette.

Captain Aceveda came to see him occasionally, although he always got the impression that the captain came because he felt it was his duty. He never stayed for long, always seemed to be on his way somewhere else and had just stopped in for a minute. He always seemed to hover by the door, and then they danced around each other. It was all perfectly choreographed, each of them knowing their steps to perfection. Aceveda asking how he was and Dutch telling him he was "feeling a little better" or "not too bad today". Lies, but they seemed to be what Aceveda want to hear so Dutch didn't really mind playing along.

Danny always came once a week, which both surprised and pleased him. He wanted her to come, but felt a little guilty for his selfishness when she was there. Although she tried to hide it he could always see the sadness in her eyes when she looked at him. He often thought it would be better for her if he told her not to come anymore, so she wouldn't have to see him deteriorating every time she visited, but he never did. He couldn't quite get the words out of his mouth. Selfish or not he wanted her to come, he wanted to bask for a little while in her beauty and her warmth and since he was dying he had decided that maybe he could be a little selfish every now and then. One thing that always made him smile when Danny came was when she'd tell him that her partner had asked her to tell Dutch that he was praying for him. Someone should tell the guy that it didn't seem to be working.

Despite his amusement he did rather envy Officer Lowe his faith. It must be comforting to have something to cling onto when the whole world seemed to be so dark. Dutch wished he had the comfort of belief. The promise that this wasn't it, that there was an after-life, a paradise waiting for him. He wasn't so sure though and that saddened him. Sometimes as he looked at the world he thought that there must be something out there, that all that beauty and diversity couldn't have just come about by some freak accident of fate. That if all the evil he'd seen during his life was real, then maybe it was balanced out by some kind of omnipotent force for good. Then his scientific side would kick in and he'd think about evolution, natural selection and survival of the fittest and it didn't seem that God had any place in all that rationalisation.

He was so tired, more exhausted than he'd ever been in his whole life. He'd vowed to fight until the end, but now he didn't feel as if he had any fight left in him. Death was waiting for him; close by, cold and watchful, growing impatient. Maybe that was why he had no strength left, maybe the time was right, maybe he could finally rest. He'd certainly come to terms with things, tried hard to find peace in acceptance. When he'd first been diagnosed he'd been so angry at the unfairness of it all. Why him? He didn't want to die, while he wasn't perfect he'd tried to lead a good life, never hurt anybody on purpose, so why him? Bastards like Sean Taylor, who were evil, who hurt and used others for their own amusement were allowed to live and he'd been condemned to death.

As time had gone by, however, Dutch had realised that fairness had nothing to do with it. The universe was intrinsically unfair, he already knew that so why should this be any different? He'd once said to Danny in a fit of remorse and a short-lived need to confess, "At least I had a childhood, I lived. It's pathetic to complain about it now…" He'd come to realise that those words were true. At the hospital he'd seen children dying -- Christ in his job he'd seen murdered children! -- he should be grateful for the time he had be given, not mourning for a future that didn't even exist, an illusion.

He'd had his spring and summer, his eight months, and he was tired. Reaching up he gently pulled out the nasal cannula that was supplying him with oxygen, and with a shaking hand he pushed it from his head. Settling back in his chair he stared out at the garden, turning his face towards the sun he closed his eyes, and smiled, as he felt an icy cold hand slip into his, and with a sigh Dutch let go.

"Afternoons will be measured out

Measured out, measured with

Coffeespoons and T. S. Eliot."


End file.
